The Handmaid's Tale, an acclaimed drama series based on Margaret Atwood’s best-selling dystopian novel, concludes after six seasons on Hulu. One strand of the story for Season 6 concentrates on Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) who emerges as the public face of New Bethlehem - a "modernized, strategically liberalized island" within the totalitarian world of Gilead. Several scenes take place inside Serena’s home in New Bethlehem, which overlooks a picturesque lake. While the exterior shots were filmed on location at Crystal Beach in Ontario, the interior of the house was meticulously constructed on a soundstage in Toronto. To create the panoramic views of the lake outside the set windows, the filmmakers relied on Rosco SoftDrop technology. Below, cinematographer Nicola Daley BSC ACS shares how she used the backdrop creatively to craft immersive, three-dimensional lake scenes for the final season.
The photo of Lake Erie at Crystal Beach in Ontario with a small section of the pier was taken by our team on location, and then Rosco made the backdrop to align precisely with the exterior location. Our goal was to match the real location and ensure that the studio set blended seamlessly with the actual setting in Crystal Beach. We couldn’t film all the scenes on location as Crystal Beach is a two-hour drive from Toronto. We had a rule that if you were filming in the sun porch of the house then you were on location, but if you were deeper into the house in the living room then you were filming on the stage with SoftDrop.
Creating the backdrop imagery
We’ve used Rosco backdrops in previous seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, and I’ve found them remarkably easy to light—whether for day or night scenes. The team at Rosco was so helpful when Larry Spittle, Art Director, and I were going back and forth on images for the SoftDrop.
They advised us on blurring, colour saturation and helped us go a bit lighter on the horizon for the night image of the lake so that it could also be lit for a ‘sunset’ look as well. Phil Greenstreet, Rosco's Head of Technical Development, was incredibly helpful and was always there on the end of a phone for any technical advice we needed.
A lake backdrop is, in a way, a lot harder than a neighbourhood or a cityscape. When you look at a lake in reality it can even look two dimensional, depending on your perspective! So to make a backdrop of a lake look three dimensional is a challenge. I decided I wanted to hang the fishing line in front of the backdrop and thread onto the line sequins and small mirrored squares that I just bought from a craft store.
The SFX department then put slow-moving fans onto the sequins so they moved and I hit the mirrors and the sequins with hard light so that they moved and sparkled on the lake. This meant that if you were on the set, filming with a longer lens then the out-of-focus sequins looked like the sun dancing on the water and making it sparkle.
This slight background movement brings the whole backdrop to life and sells it to the viewers’ eye, without the need for VFX in every shot. I tested this sequin theory in pre-production on a small sky blue backdrop and it worked very well so we implemented it for the shoot. I think the grips enjoyed threading all the sequins onto the fishing line!
The SoftDrop worked really well, and overall I was extremely happy. Combined with a very low-fi suspended sequin trick it worked extremely well. Elisabeth Moss, who directs and stars in The Handmaid’s Tale said to me, “But surely a close-up of Serena was done on location with the sparkling lake in the background,” and I said, “No it was the SoftDrop.” Even she was surprised! It meant that the studio and the location footage blended seamlessly in the final edit.
You can watch the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu to see how convincingly the lake scenes were captured on camera.
To discover more about Nicola Daley’s work, visit her website www.nicoladaley.com or follow @nicdaleydp on Instagram. To learn more about the product filmmakers used to create realistic lake scenes in The Handmaid's Tale, please visit the SoftDrop product page on our website.